


The all-beholding sun shall see no more / In all his course; nor yet in the cold ground,

by liminalweirdo, slowlimbs



Series: when we hit the city limits don't forget me for a minute (tonight) [3]
Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Anal Sex, Bisexual Richie Tozier, Homophobia, M/M, Top Eddie Kaspbrak/Bottom Richie Tozier, trauma is hard, vague voyeurism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-24
Updated: 2020-11-24
Packaged: 2021-03-10 05:14:07
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 20,609
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27698141
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/liminalweirdo/pseuds/liminalweirdo, https://archiveofourown.org/users/slowlimbs/pseuds/slowlimbs
Summary: Richie and Eddie learn how to be, together, after twenty-seven years of lost time.
Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier
Series: when we hit the city limits don't forget me for a minute (tonight) [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1994314
Comments: 6
Kudos: 51





	The all-beholding sun shall see no more / In all his course; nor yet in the cold ground,

**Author's Note:**

> Title from [_Thanatopsis_ by William Cullent Bryant](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/50465/thanatopsis)

They drive across the country to something resembling home. It’s not quite theirs — really, it’s Richie’s — and he’d had a pile of bills and letters so huge that it stuck out of his mail box. Eddie had made short work of those, ever organized, always switched on, and he’s wrapped in one of Richie's sweaters looking out at rare Californian rain, laptop open on properties they could feasibly afford.

Eddie likes the cottages the best. He doesn’t even know if that’s what they’re called but they’re small and secluded and beautiful and feel like home just looking at them. He sighs, runs a hand through his hair (he hasn’t gone back to product, not yet, it feels too much like being who he used to be. Who he isn’t anymore), and looks at his laptop. Looks at Richie, legs up on his couch, pad and pencil in hand as he tries to come up with his own material.

“We need to call the others, dude. Bev said Ben called everyone to let them know before we got there but… they’re probably worried, right? They’ll be worried about you.”

Richie looks up at him, grateful for a break, honestly. He drops the pencil with relief and rubs his eyes beneath his glasses. “Yeah, it’s me they’re worried about,” he says. “Worried about my sanity.” He sits up, though and reaches out for his laptop on the coffee table, flips it open. It’s around four, on a Saturday. Probably a good time to call. There’s something in him that doesn’t want to — it’s the same as with Bev and Ben, that inkling of uncertainty like: what if they poke holes in this reality, make him see that it doesn’t hold water. “You want to?” Richie asks. “Put you on the phone this time,” he says, and grins, “So that I don’t get fucking punched? Bill would probably fly here to punch me in the face himself.”

Eddie swallows, looks away and pulls one hand into his sleeve and rubs his fingers against the fabric. “I’m… I don’t… I mean, yeah, _obviously_. Put me on.” Exhales shakily, fear coiling low in his stomach. “I’m nervous and I don’t know _why_ , Richie.” Soft, joining him on the sofa and tangling their feet together against the carpet. “I feel like Bill’s gonna yell at me, or something.”

Because yeah, they’d all loved him as kids. Big Bill. Their leader and protector. But now he’s scared of him. Scared of the shouting and the anger. 

_‘You want Richie too?’  
_ _‘Please don’t be mad, Bill.’_

“He’s not going to yell at you,” Richie says, but his fingers hesitate over the keys. Only for a second, though. He pulls up Skype, and has to manually put Bill’s info through from his phone. God, it’s so fucking weird — all these names in his phone he’d forgotten. Suddenly there’s more people in his B column than anywhere else — everyone has their last names except for his friends — except for the losers. Ben, Bev, Bill. Eddie is in his phone as Spaghetti which he thinks is hilarious every time he sees it. Not that Eddie ever calls him — Eddie still doesn’t have his own phone, and he and Richie have barely left one another’s sight since Maine. 

The whole apartment smells like rain. 

“I mean,” Richie says, “we can call Mike first, if you want.”

“If they’re not together already plotting to like, stab me back to death or something.” It’s jumbled with a hint of laughter, but he’s already shifting closer to Richie. To safety and security, his hand falling to his knee. Bev had already filled him in on what she’d thought. Where her brain had led her without asking permission. He expects the same from Bill and Mike, too.  
  
But Beverly listens to reason. To Richie. Eddie isn’t sure the boys will be the same way.  
  
Richie, instinctively, touches the place where It had pierced Eddie’s back — unmarked, unblemished, now, but he could find it in an instant anyway. He’d pressed his jacket to the rush of blood from that wound where it had gone straight through. He taps the call button a couple times, but doesn’t press down. “I don’t think so,” he says, “Besides, Bev and Ben and me, we’ve all been with you. Honestly, I’d be shocked if Beverly hasn’t already convinced them it’s fine.”  
  
His fingers slide down Eddie’s back, and he presses the call button for Bill. Maybe Mike is there. They live pretty close to one another, these days, Mike finally having gotten the hell out of Derry. The calling music starts to play and he gets this weird sinking feeling in his stomach and almost hangs up the call. The want to do it twitches through his arm. He draws back a little.  
  
And the line is fuzzy, but there they are. Bill and Mike, obviously concerned, obviously _pissed_ , looking from Richie to Eddie to Richie.  
  
“What the _fuck_ , man?”   
  
Eddie preferred Bill with a stutter. Maybe outside of Derry the man isn’t a Loser anymore, but just some regular joe. He flinches at the tone of his voice. “Hi, Bill. Mike. Hi.” Because he doesn’t know what else to say. He feels too exposed. It’s too much, suddenly, and he wants to hide his face in Richie but doesn’t. Wants to get up and leave but doesn’t.  
  
“Richie.” Bill doesn’t say anything else. Doesn’t have to. His face says it all.  
  
Richie cocks his head at the screen, something narrowing about his expression — maybe it’s in his eyes or his mouth. It shifts a little, changes, but then he smiles. “Hey,” he says, and it comes out almost as a question. “You’re together. That’s convenient.”  
  
There’s radio silence from the other two. Richie half wonders if the screen froze, and his brain kicks into gear before he can get freaked “Listen, we would have called you sooner, but after, we just had to get the fuck out of Derry, and you know how reception is in, uh, the desert. How— how are you guys?”  
  
“Rich,” Mike says, and then doesn’t seem to know how to continue. He shoots a glance at Bill who acknowledges it, somehow, without looking. His eyes are fixed on Eddie like he’s waiting for his jaw to crack open at a right angle, spilling light.  
  
Eddie says “I should—” because they’re not going to speak while he’s here. Eddie can see that. He can see the way they’re looking at him. Like he’s— _Time to float._ Something he’s not. Eddie swallows, pats Richie’s shoulder as he gets up, and escapes into the kitchen to stand with his head over the sink. Because he’s fairly sure he’s going to vomit.  
  
“Richie,” Bill starts, and Richie thinks his voice sounds hollow in his sudden solitude. He doesn’t watch Eddie leave. Instead, he watches Bill scrub his hand over his jaw and clenches his own. “That’s not Eddie. It can’t be.”  
  
And has to force himself to unclench it. He rolls his eyes, finds drudges up good humour from somewhere, and arranges his mouth into a half-smile. “It’s different when you’re here,” he says. “I mean, jesus, the two of you barely look real through this shitty connection. It’s Eds, man, it is. Ask Bev, ask _Ben_. They saw him. We went there, we all— you know.”  
  
“Yeah, Bev texted and filled me in.” Bill scowls, eyebrows furrowing through the terrible picture. “It just feels off, Richie. What, you spend your entire teenage years pining after him, he _dies_ , and comes back suddenly in love with you?” It’s harsh. Bill knows it’s harsh. But he has to get Richie to see sense. “This is exactly the kind of thing It does and you know that. You can’t just be in denial because you’re getting what you want right now.”  
  
And Richie goes so, so still, his eyes never leaving Bill’s face. “ ‘Suddenly’...” he repeats. He sounds remarkably calm, but something is rushing to a boil beneath the surface. Something makes him bite his lip so hard it hurts. He swallows and that hurts, too, that’s how tightly he’s holding himself. Finally he breaks eye contact and looks out the sliding door to the balcony. On the screen, the light washes his face out white, colours the line of his glasses arm shocking black against his temple. And then he looks back.  
  
“ _It_ ,” he says, “is fucking dead. Or were you not there? Anyway, even if It wasn’t, last time I checked, it could only fuck with us for so long — _minutes_ , maybe. It can’t— can’t just _be like_ one of us forever, what’s the point of that? It feeds off of our fear, Bill— Mike, tell him. It’s just fucking— it’s just Eds.” Richie’s eyes flicker back and forth between Bill’s. “Come _on_ , man.”  
  
“We don’t _know_ what It’s capable of, thats my point.” Bill grinds his teeth over the words, fists clenched under the table. “It died and Eddie died and if you’re ready to believe he came back you have to be ready to think that he’s not who he says he is.”  
  
“I _have_ thought that,” Richie says, “You think I haven’t? It was one of my first fucking thoughts, man, jesus. I’ve lived with this shit as long as you have, I forgot and remembered again just like you. Why do you think we went to Bev?” And it’s not exactly the truth, but mostly. It mostly is. Richie had needed someone else to _see_. To see Eddie. “It’s not like I’m just fucking out here— pretending that something I know is totally fucked up is fine—” he takes a short, sharp breath. Or maybe he is doing that, a little. Maybe he and Eddie are skirting around the particulars of it, but what is there to talk about? He died, he’s back. Neither of them knows how it happened. “Christ, what is wrong with you?” he asks, suddenly. “I mean for all you know, It could’ve gotten into me, or Bev. We were both caught in the Deadlights, but I never fucking once saw you glance at one of us sidelong.”  
  
“ _You_ didn’t die!” Bill’s shouting and doesn’t mean to be, frustrated. “We could get to _you_ , alive, immediately.” He’s _frustrated_ , but more than that he’s hurt and angry. Because Richie thinks he’s doing this out of something other than concern and love. “Eddie turns up after _weeks_ of being _gone_ and you fall into bed with him like you’ve forgotten what It did. It showed me Georgie. It showed _you Eddie_ when we were kids. What the fuck, Richie? You think Eddie — _our Eddie_ — would just let this happen? He’d just be okay with being some-some sewer zombie?”  
  
“He’s _not_ ,” Richie says, and it comes out strangled.  
  
“Bill’s right, Richie,” Mike says. “We didn’t even see half of what It could do.”  
  
“ _Not. This_ ,” Richie says, enunciating each word. “If you were just _here_ you’d see. If It was still alive, we’d all be on our way to fucking forgetting one another already, and we aren’t, are we? No, we’re fucking not, and you _know why_ , Bill. It’s over, we finished it. And this has fucking _nothing to do_ with ‘ _getting what I want_ ’, it has nothing to do with me.” He laughs, breathless and spiteful and continues, voice too loud “I went my whole _fucking life_ not _getting what I wanted_ , Bill, that wasn’t just going to change when Eddie died. I couldn’t just _replace_ him with someone else.” He searches Bill’s face, and Mike’s but he’s not getting through to them. He’s not. They’re decided. “Look, I don’t know how, but he came _back_.” Richie’s voice cracks, breaks, on the last word. It would be embarrassing, maybe, if he hadn’t listened to Bill stutter his whole fucking life. “He found me. And you think that out of all of us, that _I_ wouldn’t know him?”  
  
“Why Eddie? Huh? Why Eddie and not G-Georgie? Why Eddie and not Stan? What about everyone else It killed?” Bill hates it. That this is the real reason he’s angry. Why Eddie, forty years old, with a loveless marriage and an unhappy life? Why not his baby brother, who hadn’t had a chance? Why not Stan who loved and was loved?  
  
That stops Richie dead in his tracks. He looks at Bill and the anger fades, a little. Just a little. “I don’t know,” he finally says, quieter. “Christ. You know I’m sorry about Georgie, Bill, we all are. Maybe we killed It before Eddie was gone. Maybe— maybe there was just enough time. Maybe it was because of the fucking ritual— Mike? Right? It could be,” he says when Mike looks uncertain. “We brought the— the tokens, his inhaler. I don’t know. Derry’s _fucked_. Fucked up shit happens. But it gave us each other, and maybe it gave us this. If It was here, if It was Eds, I’d be fucking dead by now, too,” Richie says. “You know it. You have to. Bill. Come on.”  
  
Because maybe part of him is scared. Because maybe Bill, as ever, is not entirely wrong. But Richie knows one thing is true — knows that the man who went into the kitchen, who’s probably taking puffs of his inhaler or vomiting or crying, who deserves to have Richie with him right now, and deserves better from Bill and Mike — he _knows_ that’s Eddie. He knows it is. What scares him now is that it might not be permanent. That Derry might drag Eddie back to the wreckage that was the house on Neibolt Street.  
  
“I don’t know, man.” Bill gives up, all the fight gone from him in a rush of hopelessness. “I just don’t know. It’s possible but unlikely, I guess.” Shakes his head and pinches the bridge of his nose like he’s fending off a headache, breathing deeply. “I just. It’s not _fair_ , is it? It’s not fucking fair.” So much of it is unfair, the whole situation, the grief that he’s felt a thousand times folded on his chest. “ _Nothing_ about this screams Pennywise, to you? Nothing?” He’s squinting at the screen, still unhappy, but calm. “It fed off fear. And you’re not _scared_ now? You’ve not been constantly just—. Fucked up, since Derry? How do you know It’s not just… sustaining Itself on that?” Because his mind is pretty set.  
  
That’s not Eddie.   
  
“Eddie is dead, Richie. We had a funeral. He’s dead. Like Georgie. Like Stan.”  
  
Richie holds his eyes, holds them the whole time. Until he asks him if he’s scared now, and then He drops his head into his hand, suddenly wanting to fucking cry. Like he did at the house, at the Quarry. _I miss him_. It had been all he could think. Over and over and over again. When Bill finishes, Richie looks up, and there are tears in his eyes, but he’s pretending there aren’t. “What the fuck do you want me to do, Bill, kill him again? What do you want me to fucking do?” Because it’s ludicrous.  
  
“Well…” Bill is clearly uncomfortable. He doesn’t want to say it. He doesn’t want to say it and Richie is going to make him. “What’s… what’s the alternative, Richie? You’re scared, It eats fear, It’s not Eddie. What’s the alternative? Just let It live there, with you, until you actually go insane?”  
  
Richie thinks, for a moment, that he will be an adult about this. He’ll show Bill that he’s not always the fucking leader anymore, that he’s not the one with all the answers, that he doesn’t have one up on Richie, like he always fucking has done. Holding Georgie over all their heads because his story was the most tragic. Richie thinks he’ll be the bigger man here.   
  
He thinks all of those things, and what he says is:  
  
“Yeah. Yeah, that’s what I’m going to fucking do, Bill,” and there’s no sarcasm in it, no irony. He fucking means it, because he knows. He knows that the person in his kitchen is Eddie, and even if Bill and Mike are too goddamn stupid to see it, Richie knows. He reaches out and slams the laptop shut by way of ending the call, and then he follows the path Eddie took out, goes to find him.

~

Eddie has not vomited. He has not cried. Instead, he has stayed completely still. Is pale, almost green in colour, but staring at Richie like he’s grown another head.  
  
“Richie I—.” He swallows the words instead of saying them, crossing the floor to go to him, to smooth trembling hands down his arms. “Are you— are we—.” He’s seen Richie protective a handful of times — teenage hands on skinny arms, too-large mouth set and eyes scared, fingers on his cheeks to turn him away from the terrifying. It’s not like this. This is protective and angry. Richie is _seriously_ fucking pissed off and Eddie doesn’t know what to do. “You okay?” To the same timbre of his hands.  
  
“Yes,” he whispers, and then he takes Eddie’s face and kisses him hard on the mouth like: _I know you, I know they’re wrong._ Kisses him like he can prove it — that he doesn’t doubt him, not for a second. Not him. Not Eds. He’s scared of other things, but he knows this man, he’d know him anywhere, in any form.   
  
It doesn’t make everything better, but it helps. It helps to have their mouths pressed together, their lips tingling with force and feeling, Eddie's hands moving to cup the sides of his neck as he kisses back with as much strength as he can, an _I’m here, I’m me, I promise_ unspoken against his tongue. “I’m sorry, Richie. They’re being assholes but I understand why. I wouldn’t be able to trust Derry either if it hadn’t already let me go.”  
  
“Don’t be fucking sorry, idiot, they’re the ones who can’t see it. Bev did. Ben did. Jesus _christ_. I need a drink,” he says, and pours one, tips an empty glass towards Eddie like you _want?_  
  
“Drinking won’t solve shit.” But he’s nodding anyway, loathe to let him go, follows him to trail his fingers down the back of his neck. “Thanks. For standing up for me, and stuff.” Gets on his tiptoes - hates that he has to get on tiptoes and loves it — to kiss his cheek. “You were always good at that.” Sighs, rubs his fingers over his forehead, frowns through at the empty living room. “If Georgie had come back, Bill would have believed that, don’t you think?”  
  
Richie scoffs, too pissed at Bill to think critically. “Or he’d have smothered him with a pillow, and accidentally killed him again.” He’s _shaking_ as he pours Eddie a drink and hands it to him. “I mean, that fucking _shit_ he said, why not Stan—, why not Georgie— it wasn’t— who the fuck does he think he is, deciding who and who isn’t fucking _good enough_ to be here. Like he’s Jesus fucking Christ Almighty.” For a moment, he stands there holding the glass of whiskey, shaking just like he did before his show that night that Mike had called. _Mike_. Sitting there, always on Bill’s side, and _not_ helping. That stuck with him the most, because he knew what Bill meant. He meant _Eddie’s not enough. Eddie doesn’t amount to Georgie, or Stanley._ “Just because you’re not Bill’s favourite— jesus— jesus, fucking christ.” He looks up, eyes searching for Eddie’s.  
  
Eddie meets them, his own gaze clear and dark and not _yellow_ or _blue_ the way Bill thinks they must be, then looks down and smiles — a little shyly, shrugging one shoulder. “I never was. I don’t think I ever bounced back from, you know, not wanting to go swimming through shit to look for the missing kids back home.” He scrapes his fingers through his hair, across his scalp, shakes strands out of his eyes and looks back up at him. “I’m old and ugly enough to be okay with it, Rich. I’m your favourite, after Bev, so fuck ‘em, right?” But it hurts. It pulls his mouth at the edges to think that he’s so… removed from Bill now. From Mike. And yeah, sure, he’s not Bill-as-an-Adult’s _biggest_ fan but he remembers how much he loved him once upon a time.  
  
He remembers how he loved them all. How it filled him and made him brave.  
  
Richie looks at him — with his hair in his dark eyes, standing there saying he’s Richie’s second favourite, and _ugly_ and, fuck, fine, maybe they are old — a hell of a lot older than _fourteen_ , that’s certain, but he— “I also thought you were a little bitch for not wanting to go swimming through shit,” Richie says, “But you were there when it counted. You saved me from the Deadlights. You didn’t leave, even after you ran into the leper in the pharmacy, or after Bowers stabbed you in the face. And you were always my favourite, idiot.”  
  
“Need I remind you of the fact that you are the little bitch in this relationship? — why are you looking at me like that, fucknut?” He says in retaliation, because there’s something analytical about the way Richie is staring at him. Something that Eddie would otherwise perceive as scheming if the man hadn’t softened immensely in his old age.  
  
Richie takes a drink, trying to shake it off. “I dunno, I’m freaked out now. Also, fucking sorry, I said he wouldn’t get mad at you…” he sighs. “And the last thing we need is Bill coming here trying to _save the day_.” Christ, that scares him. Maybe it shouldn’t, but what if something happens, what if Bill makes something happen to Eddie?  
  
But he wouldn’t right? Not if he saw him, not if he came here and looked him in the face.   
  
“Aw shucks, he don’t scare me none.” It’s said to get a smile out of Richie, but Eddie's own face is lined with worry. “It’s fine. He didn’t yell… at me. Just about me.” He looks at his feet, shoving his hands into his pockets and shrugging again. “He’ll come around. It’s not like he has much choice. We’ll just have to lock up anything resembling weaponry so he doesn’t murder me to death.”  
  
“That’s so not funny,” Richie says, dead seriously. Richie Tozier has never been one to evade a joke, but here he is, doing it. He drinks the last of the whiskey in his glass and goes to pour another one, and then doesn’t. “We should call Bev…” he says, because she always knows what to do, and he wasn’t lying, she’s not his favourite, but she’s the best girl he knows, and the most level-headed person in his life. She’s grounding, and stubborn, but not to a fault. Not like Bill is.  
  
And to his credit, Eddie drops it immediately; he takes his hands out of his pockets again and wraps his arms around Richie’s middle, a little unsure. “Yeah I—. If you think that’ll help then—. What can I do, Richie?”  
  
“I just don’t fucking get how he can believe an insane shapeshifting clown and not this. After everything we saw—” he bursts out, not really answering Eddie’s question. Because he doesn’t know what to do, either of them. He has no fucking idea what to do when your childhood friend suddenly wants you to take your other childhood friend out back and shoot him.  
  
Panic rockets through him and for a moment Eddie really doesn’t know what to do. His hands flutter over his back and then he’s doing the only thing he can do to make Richie stop — he’s kissing him. It feels like the last few days have been endless kissing, endless touches, and it still thrills Eddie but this is clearly borne from needing to ground them both. Bring them back from the edge of darker thoughts and realer worries. “Because Derry never gave us anything good, not really, not outside of each other. It’s okay. It’s okay. It’s okay.”  
  
Richie swallows and the kissing helped, but then it was over and he’s so fucking freaked out, suddenly — it’s like all of it, all of the fear he’s been running from since they quit the Town House in Derry that night has finally caught up to him and— he slides his hand over the back of Eddie’s head and holds him close, face buried in his hair. It doesn’t do much to stop the shaking. “What if it takes it back, though?” he says. _What if it takes you back?_  
  
“Good fuckin’ luck to it, I’m not there anymore.” He turns his face so his nose is against the hinge of Richie’s jaw, eyes closing. “I don’t… I’m not thinking about that, Hon.” Because he has thought about it. He’s lain awake in the sunrise, watching Richie’s back rise and fall as he sleeps, tracing ‘R + E’ on his shoulder blade over and over.  
  
But when he thinks about it he—  
  
“When I think about it I think about… how, even if it does, I have this time. With you. Right now. And how I don’t want it wasted.” Gulps, noisily, and then remembers to drink his own whiskey because he feels exposed and vulnerable. He gulps that too. “I think about how fucking lucky I am to have had this chance. To live honestly. And to be free. And to have you around to verbally abuse me. And how—,” pauses, pours another glass, because this is the hard part; “if I die. If it— if I have to go back. If I died. At least I’d have lived, first, this time. I’ve lived and I’ve— I’ve really, _really_ loved and I’ve been. I’ve had someone love me back in ways I didn’t know were possible. So. So that’s. Yeah.”  
  
Richie’s gone very quiet, his eyes down. “That’s what you should’ve said to me back at the cistern,” he says, and, this time, it is a joke. Because he doesn’t know what to do with that, ever — Eddie’s sincerity, his vulnerability. Often, Richie thinks that Eddie is too gentle for him, too genuine and sweet. Richie’s the Trashmouth and Eddie, for all of his ability to give as good as he gets, has these depths inside himself that Richie thinks he could never hope to tap into. And so he doesn’t know what else to say. He thinks _I love you_. He thinks it about a hundred times a day, and says it, maybe, a handful of times a week. Always rushing out of him, like the dam they built in the river that summer, just when it breaks.  
  
“I’ll keep that in mind the next time I get fucked up by a clown-demon-spider.” Eddie grumbles, rubbing an eye with the heel of his hand. “I just mean that we can’t worry about things that we can’t control. Here and now I can control you doing the dishes and going to get groceries. I can’t control what Bill thinks or does.” Eddie sighs and for the millionth time in his life wishes he could control exactly those things.  
  
“I hope that doesn’t mean I’m doing dishes _and_ groceries,” Richie says. “You should do the dishes because you look so _cute_ doing them. You get very serious, like you have frown lines right—” he touches the space between Eddie’s brows. “What’ve those dishes ever done to you, Kaspbrak?” But he goes out with him to get groceries anyway, because now he has to worry about Eddie maybe disappearing and Bill showing up like a goddamn ninja and potentially nunchucking him out of existence, which would mean that Richie would have to kill Bill, and then probably Mike, as the last witness, and it’s a lot. It just seems like a lot. He’s already killed one person — jesus christ, he really has done that — and he’s not eager to jump back into it again.

At least, he thinks, Eddie is right about things being out of their control. At least Eddie is, so often, the voice of order and reason, and Richie finds that, these days, he gets headaches less, and feels less like shit because Eddie’s very _‘three meals a day’_ and _‘you need to drink more water you’ve had like ten coffees’_ and isn’t that just like him? Richie loves it. Hadn’t realized how much he’d missed it because he couldn’t realize how much he missed it, and instead spent the entirely of his twenties kind of battling between ambition and bone deep exhaustion that stemmed from a loneliness he didn’t understand. 

Losing the Losers had felt like losing something integral to himself, and he’d just assumed that everyone felt that way, until he made jokes about it — that inexplicable nostalgic loss he thought everyone must feel and was met with radio silence from the audience. He stopped making those jokes after that. His thirties were better because he stopped trying to drink his misery into the ground (usually resulting in him being hungover into the ground the next morning — easier to recover from at twenty-one but not twenty-nine) , stopped trying so hard to just… fit in. Stopped needing people to _like_ him so much, because even when they did, he still felt like something was missing.

So he doesn’t worry about it, like he’s been working so hard at not doing for weeks — since Eds came back. He doesn’t worry about Derry or It, or the sewers, he doesn’t worry about that place taking Eddie back because he cannot even fucking fathom it. Not now.

And he keeps thinking about what Eddie said, about being loved back, and feels like he doesn’t quite measure up to that sentiment but, christ, he _tries_. He’s trying.

~

He calls Bev sort of secretly, one afternoon while Eddie’s in the shower and kind of dissolves into this trainwreck of “Didn’t you explain it to Bill?” and he’s both blaming and trying so hard not to blame her that it ends up a mess, and he knows he’s only got a limited amount of time “Bev, you know it’s Eds, right? Like beyond a shadow of a doubt, I’m not fucking around here. You know it. So why doesn’t Bill? He’s known Eddie longer than anyone.”

“Because Bill is Bill. And Bill only sees as far as he wants to see.” Her voice is soft and sleepy, and there’s the hiss of rain and cigarettes in the background, the patter of water hitting the window. “It’s easier, for you and me to see that Eddie is Eddie.” Exhaled gently, then lips connecting with a filter, the next breath thick with smoke. “We saw the Deadlights. We saw more.”

Eddie, distantly, over a more domestic water-noise, sings a line of something old and jazzy. James Brown or Nina Simone, deep in his chest.

“I _tried_ to tell him, Richie. But you know what he’s like. I love him, we all do,” maybe slightly less now, with less need to it. His light has dimmed in favour of closer less painful ones. “But you know what he’s like. Stubborn as a bull, Big Bill. He hung up on me after I told him that if he stopped trying to focus on the end of his nose he’d see more than his own misery.”

Richie huffs out this laugh that almost sounds like a scoff, because of course Bev, of all of them, told Bill what she was thinking first, what they were all thinking. “It’s for his own good, probably.” He goes quiet for a moment, listening to Eddie being ridiculous in the shower, and thinks about how ridiculous it is that he loves it so much. He reaches up and takes his glasses off, scrubbing his hand against his eye. “Okay,” he says. “Just know that if Bill tries anything I will literally kill him, and I hope that you and me can still be friends after that, because I fucking love you, and I’d be lost without you. Just. So you know.”

It’s not even easy for him to say that, really. And he means it with every fibre of his being. Beverly, somehow, has become one of his closest friends. As a kid, thinking of her as one of the boys had been, to Richie, a compliment of the highest order, but this feels more genuine, now. After everything they’ve all been through. After knowing Bev and losing her, and knowing her again.

“Let me know and me and Ben will help you hide the body.” She laughs too, then sighs. “You know we don’t owe him shit, right?” Because she’s angry. She’s been angry since Derry. “ _He_ made us make the oath and he fucking—. He wanted to give up when you and Eddie wanted to leave.” Her breath trembles slightly. “And I love you too, Rich. _And_ Eddie. And Ben and Mike and Stan and Bill, but that doesn’t mean we still owe this fucking debt. You’re allowed to be _happy_ regardless of what any of us say.”

He exhales because he really needed to hear that. He’s already thanked her once of this kind of straight-talking, but it’s not like saying something makes it run out of power. “Thanks, Bev,” he tells her. The water in the bathroom shuts off. He says “Okay, I’m gonna go. I’ll call you soon — either for burial or something else.”

“Wait a sec, Rich.” There’s the noise of her moving, sitting up. “I actually have like. Something to ask you. So.” Stubbing out her cigarette. “Are you sitting down?”

“Shit…” he says. He feels dread — genuine, childlike fear, but he is sitting down, so he can’t even take time to figure out where he wants to collapse. “Yes,” he says, with trepidation.

“Ben asked me to marry him.” In a breathless happy rush. “And you know. Daddy’s not— he’s dead, so I was wondering, and you totally don’t have to at _all_ but.” The sound of her throat clicking as she swallows. “Ah, I feel dumb and sappy. Don’t you dare laugh at me. Would you walk me? Down the aisle, I mean?”

Richie’s just dead silent for a moment. He’s touched, genuinely, overwhelmingly. And then there’s all of these things he’s _supposed_ to say like _‘congratulations’_ and _‘where did he propose’_ or maybe that’s the sort of thing only women ask — Richie’s not too clear and never actually has been — but none of that comes out. What does, though, is something that saves both him and Bev from being overly sappy which is “You want to put _me_ in an official position, in an important ceremony, around _people_?” he says, and then, talking over himself, “Holy shit, Bev. Yes. Yes, obviously. But only because it will make the other guys jealous.” He’s cracking jokes because if he doesn’t, he thinks he might cry and when did he genuinely turn into a little bitch? 

“Well yeah. Then you have an _excuse_ to be a mouthy prick.” She laughs again, and sighs again. “Thanks, Richie. I’ll let you get back to your boyfriend.” And as if on cue, as she says _‘I love you’_ and _‘I’ll email you the details’_ and hangs up, Eddie pads into the room. He’s in sweatpants - his own ones, soft burgundy - and a t shirt. His hair is still wet, slicked back on his head, and he’s rubbing moisturizer between his hands.

“How’s Bev?” Because he’s not silly. He knows Richie’s called her to bitch her out. “Are we still on the Christmas card list?”

“We are, but I think maybe Bill’s not. Also, guess who’s getting fucking _married_?” Richie says, and then starts laughing. “God, what the _fuck_.” He gets up, goes to him, like he’s drawn there — magnetized. He loves Eddie soft, hair wet, clothes soft. He pushes a hand beneath his shirt to feel the heat of the shower on his skin.

“Shit, really? Good for them.” He grins, squirming away, teasing. “I’ve _just_ showered, horndog, you stop that.” Eddie's making it clear that he doesn’t _really_ want him to stop, everything in his body language begging for him to come closer.

And then the buzzer for the apartment trills through the room, making them both jump, and Richie’s soft touch on Eddie’s waist goes tight by accident as he looks sharply towards the door.

Eddie says: “Did you order lunch?”

“No,” Richie answers, and tries desperately to remember if he ordered a package or anything else. And then suddenly it’s like he _knows_. That weird thing between all of them they’ve always had this — this knowing, this ESP. “Don’t—… stay here,” he says, and lets Eddie go, moving towards the door slow and halting like he’s wondering if he should have something he can use as a weapon. There’s nothing in the living room, though, and nothing in the hallway. The apartment’s made an effort to be sleek and modern but just ends up looking cold and clinical and he kind of hates it. No, he hates it a lot. He needs a baseball bat. 

Still, Richie reaches the door and unlatches it, pulls it open. Mike and Bill stand outside like fucking police officers and Richie squares himself in the doorway, one hand braced against the frame. He’s taller than both of them (if only an inch or two) when he straightens up, and he does. Because he has no intention of moving. Honestly he’s half prepared for Bill to just rush past him like they’re playing red rover or something. “Can’t say this is a surprise,” he says, voice amicable enough.

“You gonna let us in?” It’s Richie’s stance that makes Bill draw himself up, eye contact established immediately, vying for dominance the way he always has, with Mike half hidden behind him. “Not very welcoming, here, Richie.” Because he wants to get into the apartment. Wants to get his hands on whatever it is wearing Eddie's face.

“Yeah, because you’re acting like a fucking psychotic prick,” Richie says. “He’ll talk to you if he wants to, and _only_ if he wants to.” His eyes flicker over him, because he’s not playing this dominance game. It’s stupid anyway. Instead he looks them over as if to check for weapons or ritual tools or anything else they might have brought with them that might hurt Eds. Part of him is half-touched that Mike and Bill would even come all the way to California for him, to look out for him but it’s overshadowed by the fact that he thinks, he _knows_ that it’s less that, and more that Bill is so singularly obsessed with killing the clown that he dropped everything, made Mike drop everything, and just showed up. He thinks it’s more that, than anything. 

“You’re being fucking insane.” Bill’s move is sudden, ducking under his arm and shoving into his side, escaping grabbing hands and pounding his way up the stairs before either of them can stop him.

“Eddie!” Richie bolts after him, but for a moment Mike tries to stop him. For a moment, it’s like being on the street in front of Neibolt, collapsing, Mike and Ben holding him back. For a moment Richie thinks that he's going to feel like that again, if Bill does anything to Eddie.

It’s lucky, really, that Eddie is so lightfooted. He goes from being near the door to vaulting himself over the couch in about five seconds flat, so Bill’s fingers only barely brush against his arm. “Get away from me!” He stands, wary and watching him, as Bill tries to make up his mind on what his next move is. The altercation is only seconds long, Bill scrabbling to follow him over the couch and knocking it to its back, knocking Eddie as they both tumble across the floor. “Ah! You fucker! Get off! Bill!”

Downstairs, Richie fights Mike so hard and so frantically he thinks he might have actually elbowed Mike in the face, but he doesn’t spare even a split second to check. The moment he feels Mike’s hands loosen, Richie bolts up the steps. He registers Bill over him, holding him down, and Richie fucking tackles Bill. Or me means to. Between also clearing the fallen couch and the panic in his chest he overshoots slightly, and he and Bill tumble across the floor separately. Richie loses his glasses somewhere, but he grabs for Bill, fights for the upper hand and gets it, actually slams Bill back down into the tiled floor by the shoulders, finds the soft place between Bill’s legs and braces his knee just above it like _I will_. “What the _fuck_ , Bill?!”

“That’s not _Eddie_ , Richie!” It’s like he doesn’t care. Like Richie is right, because he is: like Bill is obsessed and traumatized and Derry had only ever taken shit from him. And what makes Richie and Eddie so special? Why do they get each other back? He fights against Richie, eyes on Eddie — the Thing pretending to be him. “It’s _not fucking real_. It’s like the flyer, it’s like the fucking flyer.”

And for a moment, Richie looks genuinely sad. Because fucking Bill had been the one to remind of him of what was real and what wasn’t. Bill had been the one to calm him down, look out for him, take care of him. Like he always did for everyone. He looks genuinely sad and then he knees Bill as hard as he can in the groin, and feels the breath leave his body in a rush. Bill goes tense beneath him, trying to curl into that place of pain.

Somewhere in the doorway Mike shows up, bleeding heavily from his nose or his mouth, Richie only glances at him, and can’t really see much without his glasses besides the blur of red dripping down onto Mike’s white shirt. “Stop. Don’t _fucking_ move, Mikey!” he says, and he drags Bill up to his feet, one arm around his waist, the other around his shoulders, and Bill’s gasping, but he’s half boneless, and Richie’s sure he’s fucking in for it now, but he needs this moment, needs these few seconds that Bill’s pain has bought him. “Fucking look at him, Bill, look at him. Just look.” He has his fingers around Bill’s jaw, turning his face to Eddie, his other arm coming up around his shoulders, arm hard around his chest, not giving, not loosening for an instant. His fingers leave white marks on Bill’s cheeks.

“It doesn’t matter what It looks like, Richie!” But he looks, really looks, and something in his head snaps and loosens.

Because Eddie — _Eddie_ — is staring at him. Is trembling on the floor with his jaw set against tears because he refuses to fucking cry. That’s Eddie. That’s Eddie and it _can’t be_.

Bill lets out this — it’s almost a howl. It’s a sound of rage and grief and Derry being so fucking unfair, again. He fights against Richie’s hands because for a moment it doesn’t matter whether that’s Eddie or not; he doesn’t deserve life more than Georgie. He just doesn’t. He remembers the last things he’d said to Eddie; how he’d asked him if he wanted Richie too, and then it had been Eddie instead. How his actions and words had influenced the man and made him do what he’d done.

“Let me fucking _go_ , Richie.”

Richie does. He does but he doesn’t. He releases him, but he doesn’t exactly let him go. The sound Bill had made sticks in Richie’s chest, and suddenly _he_ feels like crying. Again. He lets him go, but he doesn’t move back, hands still lingering at Bill’s ribs, at his arms, ready to pull him back.

But the blow lands before any of them can really react — Bill still thin-quick and sharp knuckled — fist connecting squarely with Eddie’s nose. And Eddie's head thunks back against the wall, and his hands come up to catch the blood and Bill _sees_.

Red. Blood. Dripping down instead of floating up and black. Fuck.

Fuck.

He crumples. Full bodied and caged, kneeling down in front of Eddie and enveloping him into his arms. It’s Eddie. It’s Eddie. It’s Eddie. Bill swallows with a guilt thick throat, face pressed into Eddie's t shirt. “I’m so s-sorry, Eds.” On a sob, one hand cradling the back of his head.

“You will be if I get a fucking concussion, Big Bill.” That’s better than any acknowledgement or forgiveness.

Richie, though, has to shake his hands out at the sight of Eddie’s blood, has to shake the urge to fucking hit Bill, too. Instead he turns back to Mike who moved — has decided he’s allowed to move again. He’s at Richie’s side, handing him his glasses and stemming the flow of blood from his mouth — it is his mouth, Richie realizes, putting his glasses on. “Fuck,” Richie says, and looks around for something, comes up only with the dish towel, and presses it into Mike’s hands. “Sorry.” He passes a shaking hand over his own lips, fighting the nausea in his chest, his throat. “Oh god, sorry.”

His elbow, he realizes, is bleeding too. Cut on one or several of Mike’s teeth, and he knows he’s never going to hear the end of that, because Eds is going to make him go get antibiotics or something now, isn’t he? Eddie— Eddie bleeding because Richie had _tried_ , but couldn’t stop Bill anyway. 

Richie retches and Mike grabs him and guides him to the sink where he throw up that morning’s coffee, Mike’s hand cool on the back of his neck. 

“You’re disgusting,” Mike says, patting his hair.

Richie gags in response.

And Eddie: “Not in the sink! — _fuck_.” 

~

Bill helps him clean up. It feels like the least he can do. Eddie sits shirtless on the side of the tub while Bill washes blood from his face, his own knuckles, eyes skittish and guilty.

“I’m real sorry, Eds.” He feels unwell, now that the adrenaline has left him. How he realises what a fucking idiot he’s been. He owes Mike and Richie an apology, too. Fuck, Richie—. If he ever speaks to him again. Bill wouldn’t blame him if he didn’t. He doesn’t deserve the friends he has. Never did. He cups Eddie's face so that he looks at him, and presses his mouth against his hairline in a show of affection he might have given—

Given Georgie, once upon a time.

“Me too, Bill.” With sincerity, fingers clasped around both his wrists to hold him there just a moment longer. “Me too.” About Georgie. About Stan. About all of it.

“You and Richie, huh?”

“Yeah. Me and Richie.” The way it was supposed to be. The way it has to be. The only way Eddie will allow himself to live now. Tucked into the corners of Richie's life, his apartment, whatever _home_ ends up being. 

“Yeah. That’s… that’s good, I think.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.” 

They’d left the door open purely for Richie's benefit - no disappearing with the man he loves, not when you’ve just punched him and tried to kill him, none of that fuck you very much — and their conversation floats around the space while Richie cleans the sink and doctors Mike up with cool water and wet paper towels. They correct the sofa, and clean up the spilled coffee and papers, and that’s forgiveness enough, between them.

~

They stay, late into the evening, the four of them up, talking. Richie doesn’t talk to Bill for half of it, the conversation always flitting to something new, something easier whenever they get too close to having to acknowledge one another’s existence. Bill, to his credit, tries once or twice, but never explicitly tries to get Richie’s attention, never says his name the way he says Mike’s and Eddie’s.

It’s almost gone midnight when Richie, smoking out the balcony doors finally gives in. Because it’s Bill, because he knows that — at the heart of all of this — he was just trying to do what was right. It isn’t exactly forgiveness, but it’s something like it. It will be, one day.

They’re telling stories, and Bill’s is a particularly embarrassing one, but they’re all laughing. Even Richie has to laugh a little, and that cracks the final reservation in his chest. “You always were a fucking idiot, Bill,” he says, and Bill looks up at him mid-laughter and their eyes meet. Richie steps out onto the balcony and leaves the door half open, and Bill gets up to follow him out a moment later.

Outside it’s almost cold. Not compared to Maine, but it’s California cold, and Bill stands beside him, the two of them almost shoulder to shoulder, looking out over the city, the desert creeping in.

Richie says “I meant to quit again after we left Beverly’s,” and shrugs, and taps the ash off into the night.”

Bill says, like he didn’t hear “I’m really sorry, Rich,” and doesn’t stutter once and Richie sighs relief and looks at him and says “How’re your balls, asshole?” and Bill laughs softly. 

Richie takes his shoulder for a moment.

“I j-just— w-wanted—”

“I know,” Richie says, and he does. He really fucking does.

Together, they go back in.

~

“I’m not saying we can’t go somewhere with no sun, I’m just saying that maybe we should go somewhere where there’s actually fucking seasons, that’s all” Richie’s telling Eddie. It sounds like an argument because that’s what most of their conversations sound like, and it’s as much fun as it was when they were kids. 

They’ve just left a restaurant that Eddie’s been talking about for _weeks_ , and Richie has been avoiding because, honestly, it’s wanky hipster stuff. He does it for Eds, and only for Eds, though, and then the food is actually really good, and the atmosphere was very… well it was very Eddie. It’s tealight candles and dim lights and jazz. Good jazz, not shitty hold-music jazz. There’s wine with unpronounceable names and it amazes Richie, really, how much unpronounceable food Eddie is able to not only order, but also consume, when he doesn’t seem to eat _anything_ in real life. Or pretends he doesn’t. He’s not actually allergic to gluten, anyway.

_‘Lots of people are allergic to gluten, Richie,’_  
_‘Yeah, I know, but you’re not one of them.’_

It feels like a date. A genuine date, only he doesn’t have that anxiety feeling in his gut that stops him being able to eat anything, and he doesn’t have to censor everything that comes out of his mouth, and he can say _fuck_ if he wants to, when it’s Eddie who’s sitting across from him, looking impossibly dark-eyed and lovely in the candlelight.

Richie feels like he probably should have combed his hair to come here, but he hadn’t, and Eddie hadn’t asked him to. Just told him not to wear jeans because he wouldn’t be allowed in, otherwise.

They walk shoulder to shoulder -- too close, maybe -- he always seems to drift closer to Eddie — and they’re just walking kind of aimlessly. It’s a nice night, and there’s people out, and they took an Uber here anyway. Bev and Ben are getting married in a couple month’s time, It’s dead, Bill and Richie are on speaking terms again, and Mike’s forgiven him for _actually_ chipping the fuck out of his tooth. Richie paid for him to get it fixed, despite Mike’s protestations.

And Eddie, for his part, doesn’t think he’s ever been happier. Despite being allergic to gluten.

His stomach is full and his home is warm, and his heart is full and the man next to him is warm. And he’s a little wine drunk, a little soft around the edges, able to embrace his sexuality a lot more easily than Richie can. But then he’s always liked cardigans and Gucci. He can’t wait for the wedding, himself. He can’t wait to be wearing a suit and drinking with his friends without It hanging over them.

“Well, where do you want to go?” In a moment of tipsy bravery, he slots his hand into Richie’s elbow to pull himself close against the side of his body. “Where could we afford?” He lays his head against his shoulder and sighs, because this is nice. This is so nice. It’s comfortable in a way that dates with Myra never were, and Eddie can’t bring himself to feel guilty about the way he’d just thrown himself into his new life. “I think I’d follow you pretty much anywhere, you know. Not New York.” Even though he misses it and loved it, New York is old Eddie. It’s an Eddie he doesn’t want to be anymore. It’s an Eddie married to a woman, and not holding his boyfriends arm on a clear starry night.

“I see your love for me is boundless,” Richie jokes and genuinely thinks about it. “I don’t know, maybe Colorado?” He wrinkles his nose right as he says it. “Actually, it’s kind of spooky there… fuck, I don’t fucking know. “Anyway, if we can afford California, we can afford basically anywhere else, this entire place is like a goddamn slumlord,” he says, but he doesn’t mean it. He really sort of loves California right now. Or maybe that’s just the unpronounceable wine talking.

It’s in a moment of muscle memory, of such instinctual affection, that he presses his face into Eddie’s hair just for a moment, barely missing a step. He’s buzzing on said wine, and Eddie’s mouth looks redder from it, and he’s got freckles across his nose from the California sun (and, okay, Richie can’t hate California _just because of that_ , it’s fucking repulsive, really) “I want to go home,” he says, “So we can—”

“Making the assumption that we can’t anywhere else.” Eddie grins up at him, extracting his hand to find Richies, to swing it between them. “Okay, California Dreamin’, where do we go from here?” Eddie pulls them into a stop, guiding his arm around his waist so he can get on tiptoes to kiss him. It’s the wine and how incredibly sweet Richie looks by the streetlights that makes him do it, quick and affectionate, but maybe this isn’t the best place. Standing on the corner of a street, some nameless fuzzy businessman bar across from them, a small crowd of fuzzy businessmen stood outside.

Eddie doesn’t care, but he thinks Richie probably might.

As for Richie, something thrills through him, fingers closing at the bottom of Eddie’s shirt, just above his left hip, and he doesn’t — honestly — even have time to think about how he feels about it, here, in the open, and not in the safety of the apartment or the other Losers, or too-early-in-the-morning on a little wooden bridge in Maine.

Someone says “Christ, take it somewhere else, you fairies,” and every line in Richie’s body just goes tight. He draws away from Eddie fast — or rather, draws away from the kiss. His hand clenches around Eddie’s hand, where they’re still holding — holds on like he’s a kite on a windy day, and his breath catches in his throat.

It’s one of the business men standing around outside. Some beer-gutted man, balding even though he’s only, maybe, in his forties. He’s smoking a cigarette, and every single other guy in his group has turned to face them. The suit he’s wearing should make him non-threatening but somehow it doesn’t. Somehow he looks like he’s well-versed in gutting fish or something. Like he’d raise a hand to anyone he deemed weaker.

Somewhere deep within him awakens a semblance of the old Eddie. The moment Richie pulls away, looks scared, he’s stepping forward. He might be five-nine but in the moment — to protect the man he loves — he could be seven feet tall.

“You fuckin’ say something, pal?” He looks from the guy’s face to his cigarette to his throat to his kneecaps. Watches the red of the cherry as he flicks it into the street.

“You heard me.”

“Yeah, I fuckin’ did.” It takes everything in him not to sprint the distance between them and fucking clothesline him. He feels, distantly, Richie tugging at the back of his cardigan, and shrugs him off, eyes aflame. “I just wanna make sure I didn’t _mishear_ you before I pop the fuck off and show you exactly what a fuckin’ _fairy_ is capable of.”

“Eds,” Richie says, but it’s so soft. His heart is fucking racing in his chest but _Eddie_ is—

The guy tosses his cigarette and squares up. A couple of the guys behind him laugh. One of them catches Richie’s eyes, and then looks at the ground and there’s this beat — this moment where Richie realizes that that’s… that would be him. If it weren’t for Eddie, if it weren’t for everything that’s happened… he’d be the one to step back and keep his mouth shut, in case anyone _suspected_. 

And then the older man actually reaches down and grabs a handful of his own crotch, mean — his gaze his mouth, fucking mean, and fixed on Eddie. “You wouldn’t have the balls, faggot,” he says.

And Eddie, for his part, feels nothing about it. Literally nothing, for a minute, as he clenches his fists and considers him. Makes a mental note of weak _sternum knees ankles dick temples clavicle_ spots. Then he laughs, real and full, hips swaying in an exaggeration of what this fuckhead expects as he folds his arms and approaches him. “Your friends look real fuckin’ prouda bein’ seen with you right now, bro. D’you think you’ll still be able to spew that bullshit when I knock your fuckin’ teeth through? One of ‘em,” he nods his head towards the watching crowd, holding himself tight around the chest, “is gonna have to explain to your wife that you’re a homophobic fuckin’ pussy who got his ass handed to him by a fuckin’ _faggot_.” 

Eddie watches him, watches that obnoxious fucking mouth open to, as stated, spew more bullshit and—. He doesn’t even see red. He sees sepia and grey and brown, one hand shooting out to grab the man’s balls. He twists and squeezes, waits the split second it takes for him to double over, then brings his knee up to connect with his forehead _hard_.

“Ed— Eddie!” Richie says — not to stop him, but because he’s still half scared that this will go the other way — that they’ll both get jumped. Still his jaw drops. He wanted to run, a moment ago, but now he’s still — heart still racing, lungs still refusing to give him quite enough air.

The guy fucking goes down on the sidewalk, falling over like a ridiculous cockroach or something. None of his friends reach out to help him up. A couple of them even laugh and Richie’s pissed all over again, because if they’re not on their pal’s side, then why don’t they fucking _do_ something? But he knows he’s a hypocrite. He knows it. He lets out a sharp shaky breath, and then moves forward, follows Eddie, just a couple of steps. Because he seems like he’s handling himself just fine.

“Anyone else?” Eddie stands, spitting at the man on the ground, arms held out. “Come on. You’re big enough to fuckin’ stand there and say nothing while he says that shit to us, you’re big enough to take a fuckin’ swing. Come on.”

None of them move, and he’s fucking _raging_. “No? What the fuck, man? Too fuckin’ _straight_ to lay a hand on me? Don’t wanna be seen touchin’ a fuckin’ _queer_ , huh?” He spits again, hawks up a nice thick loogie and hits the dude dead centre where his forehead is blooming a bruise. “Fuck the bunch of yous. Come on, Hon.” Turns on his heel to grab Richie’s hand.

Richie just goes with him. They walk, hand in hand (Richie maybe squeezing harder than he has to), until they’re around the corner and then Richie bursts out laughing. “Fuck the bunch of yous,” he repeats, in a near perfect imitation of Eddie. They’re on a side street now, and it’s quieter, a little darker, but no one’s following them. “Jesus, when did you learn to spit a loogie so good, Eddie?”

“The Quarry, dickhead.” Eddie can’t keep still, pacing back and forth over the width of the alley, kicking at debris as he walks. Back. Forth. Back. Forth. “Where the fuck do they get off talking to us like that? Huh? What the _fuck_. And his fuckin’ buddies, I swear to fuckin’ Christ, even when I was with Myra I wouldn’t have let _any_ one speak to someone like that.” Shakes his head, runs his fingers through his hair, trembling with anger. “If he’d spoken to _you_ like that I woulda fuckin’ killed him.” And he’s glad that he stepped forward, glad he took control, took focus away from Richie. Because this he can do. He can protect Richie from this part of ugly humanity.

Richie’s eyes are flickering between Eddie’s, between his face and his hands, which are shaking. Eddie’s whole body is shaking and Richie shakes his head a little in disbelief or awe or admiration or all of the above and reaches out, but he doesn’t wait — he goes to him, takes him by the shoulders, hands brushing against his face for a moment, back to his shoulders. He holds tightly, like he can stop him from shaking. “That was the fuckin’ coolest thing you’ve ever done, Eds” he says, and he smiles, laughs again because if he thinks he doesn’t he’ll never get his blood pressure down again.

And Richie realizes, suddenly, that he’s shaking, too. Residual fear, anxiety. His mouth is dry with it and he swallows. But the thing is, he’s _not_ fucking scared, suddenly. He’s not. This thing he’s thought about, this thing he’s built up so big in his head — it was nothing, at the end of the day. It was nothing. And he’s left with Eddie, wild and shaking, lit up like a fuse. Richie wants to kiss him so fucking badly, but doesn’t. Instead, he says. “Look at you, you’re so New York. Noo Yawk.” He draws back and squares up, hands in fists. “Fuck you, bro,” — he really is very good at that Voice. The Eddie voice. He desperately wants to make him laugh because Richie — Richie feels fucking _liberated_. He pretends to pop him one, right on the nose, letting his knuckles touch him there, soft. He makes a little superhero _pow_ sound effect. 

“Oh so _you_ wanna go? Alright, alright,” Eddie’s grinning, so Richie’s already won, his own hands coming back into fists as he makes the gentlest shots at his stomach, his hips, ducking into him like he’s going to flip him over his shoulders. It’s energy over anything else, hopping on his feet and holding himself like a boxer, all sharp elbows and sharper eyes. “Fuckin’ knock you on your ass pal, I’ll show you Noo Yawk.” And then he’s laughing, hands in Richie’s lapels, pulling him down to connect their mouths again. Real, sliding home like he’s playing baseball, eyes tight shut as their noses collide and it stings — where Bill hit him.

Richie kisses him hard, harder. His breath breaks against Eddie’s lips then kisses him harder still, both of them stepping back, shoes sliding over the pavement. His hands are on Eddie’s face, in his hair, the back of his neck. “Let’s get the fuck out of here,” he breathes, and it’s not fear that makes him say it.

He’s ignored, Eddie shaking his head just a little, crowding Richie up against the wall. He can’t think about going home, not right this second, not while Richie is kissing him like that. Not with Richie allowing him control. He slots a thigh between Richie’s legs, knocks his head back and finds the sensitive patch of skin where his jaw meets his neck so he can bite down and _suck_.

Mine, he thinks, fleetingly. _This man is mine, this is my man, and I’m not fuckin’ scared._

Richie makes a sound, too loud, simultaneously tipping his chin up higher and grinding down against Eddie’s thigh. He presses the back of his own wrist over his mouth and shuts his eyes tight, the other hand fisting in Eddie’s shirt at his shoulder and Eddie grins. He fucking grins against his neck, teeth trailed up to his ear, hushing him softly as he gets his hand between them to palm at Richie’s dick through his slacks. “Someone’ll hear you, Hon.”

“Eddie,” he whispers, but he doesn’t stop him. It thrill through him and he manages this half-strangled “Make me shut up, then,” and presses his hips into his hand.

“I’m good but I’m not that good, gorgeous.” Still bordering on Brooklyn, other hand coming up to cover his mouth, stretching so he can press their foreheads together. Presses his own mouth to the back of his hand so they’re breathing the same air, and makes extremely short work of Richie’s button and fly. Gets his fingers down and around him, wanting weak knees. Wanting eye contact and intimacy in a place such intimacy shouldn’t be had. Squeezes him, gently, then pulls hand and body away from him to spit into his palm and return. It makes the slide of his hand on his cock easier, dirtier somehow.

Richie makes a soft sound, thinks _Jesus_ , and maybe says it, but it’s against Eddie’s palm, so it doesn’t come out as anything other than a soft sound. He holds his eyes, already panting, and thinks that there’s people so close — close enough that he can hear snatches of their conversation at the end of the alley, but he can’t take his eyes off Eddie’s. Doesn’t want to. He presses into his hand again, thinking they should probably do this quickly, but finds that he doesn’t want it that way. He wants just— just Eddie. Closer than he already is, closer than physically fucking possible. 

“Good?” Gentle, especially when compared to the rhythm he’s setting himself with his hand, eyes so dark they’re black through the shadows. His body feels hyper aware from the fight, from the look in Richies gaze, he knows they’re in no real danger of being caught. Not right now. And if they were—. Excitement cramps his stomach, and he speeds his hand up. “I’m gonna make you come here and then I’m gonna take you home and fuck you ‘til you can’t walk straight for a week, ‘kay, sugar?”

Richie exhales this hard breath through his nose, says “okay,” against his hand (it comes out like mgfh-ghh), and then he moans, breathing picking up. He pushes his fingers into Eddie’s hair and fists them there, twisting a little, coaxing, almost goading, _come on._

 _Fuck_ , Eddie thinks, _fuck_ , and he wants to be inside him. He wants Richie on his back with his legs spread because tonight— tonight is proof that Richie is attracted to the _maleness_ of him, not just the _Eddieness_. He growls, real and low in his throat, the hand on Richie’s mouth pressing down until he can feel teeth behind his lips and sinks his own into the hollow of his throat, leaving a mark.

Leaving a mark that people will see, unless Richie opts for turtlenecks, a purple speckled mouthmark over his Adam’s apple.

Richie squeezes his eyes shut, make a soft, desperate sound and he’s so glad, he’s _so fucking glad_ Eddie’s hand is over his mouth because he knows he’s being too loud — normally he’s the quiet one during things like this which goes against his very nature, really, since he is the Trashmouth, it’s just that he’s not— he’s not that way, with sex, not usually. And he likes to hear the sounds that Eddie makes.

And right now, he’s pressing his hips into the circle of Eddie’s hand, rocking out this motion that he wants — oh fuck, _needs_ to be faster or harder, or something, but he doesn’t bring his hands down from Eddie’s hair to fix it. Because he _likes_ this, too. He likes just giving himself over, giving him control, because he feels like that means something beyond just how fucking attracted to him he is. It means that he trusts him, too. With his life, his secrets, everything. It’s everything, oh fuck. He swallows against Eddie’s teeth in his throat and that hurts more and he makes a noise like a sob against his palm, but it is so so fucking good.

And then Eddie draws his teeth in against the skin, nipping instead of biting fully, leaning back to admire his work before moving back in. Dragging his palm down Richie’s mouth so his bottom lip is pulled open, waits for him to gasp before kissing him as hard as he can. There’s not a fight for dominance, the hand not jerking him off lining the bone of his jaw with his thumb pressed to his chin. Richie tastes like red wine and dark chocolate and Eddie wants to laugh. It’s fucking decadent compared to McDonalds breakfast kisses, Chinese lunchtime kisses, burned cookie kisses. Instead he groans against Richie, pushes forward until they’re chest to chest, just resting their mouths together.

“Come for me, sweetness. Come on. Right here in front of everyone.”

Richie doesn’t have to be fucking told twice. It’s this intense, full bodied thing, but it builds and builds for what seems like forever, until his fucking _thighs_ are shaking, and his breath is shaking against Eddie’s lips and then he tenses, every muscle in his body, and he does come. Right there in front of everyone. There’s this feeling in his stomach like nervousness, like butterflies, but it’s all good. It’s Eds with sweaty hair and freckles in the summer, showing up when he was supposed to be home. Showing up in spite of his mother. It’s that feeling — Richie looking up as Eddie steps through the trees and into the Barrens and Richie’s stomach doing a somersault and — god, he’s been in love with him his whole fucking life.

He knows it, knows it to the bones of him, but sometimes he fucking _remembers_. 

Eddie is smiling _now_ , in front of him - freckles and cardigan and bruised knuckles, collecting his come in a palm and smearing it down the wall next to his head as he kisses him. Sweet, so sweet, wiping his hand on Richie’s expensive dinner jacket and nibbling at his bottom lip as he helps him get tucked away again.

“Good?” He asks again when Richie has stopped shaking, eyebrows raising, still smiling.

“Huh?” Rich asks, overwhelmed, still a little starry-eyed. He blinks, breath shaky and straightens up on legs that feel like Jell-O. “Fuck,” he says, “That was pretty fucking good.” 

Mostly cleaned up, and feeling like he’s just been totally, brilliantly fucked, they leave. Richie’s still flushed and panting by the time they exit the little alley.

“Were you serious about fucking me?” he asks, later, once they’re out of the cab and climbing the steps to his apartment. Because they haven’t done that before. Or, yet. And he doesn’t know — didn’t know— if it was even going to be a thing. He doesn’t think much of the dynamics of any of it, except that he likes it and he loves Eds, and that’s enough.

“Do you want me to?” Eddie’s voice is low and steady, hand warm and solid on the small of his back. “I wanna fuck you, yeah.” Nods, moves so that Richie’s facing him outside of their door, tippy-toeing again to kiss him. Will never get sick of kissing him, this one more tender than the ones he’d bitten into him in the alley. “Do you want me to?”

And it’s not that Richie has to think about it, really. He doesn’t, but he takes a minute to kiss him anyway, chasing his lips as he pulls back, getting one more moment of their mouths together, and then he’s searching Eddie’s dark eyes and he says “Yeah, I want you to.” He unlocks the door, both of them stepping inside. The hall light is on. They always try to leave at least one light on — he wonders if the others do, too. Even when they’re not home, that hall light stays lit, or the bathroom light, at night. Just in case. Like maybe something might grow there, in the quiet and the dark. 

He locks up. “You know, Eddie Spaghetti, for being so goddamn cute, you sure were fucking hot out there tonight,” he tells him, eyes dark behind his glasses. “I think one of the assholes in that group fell in love with you.”

“You jealous?” Eddie grins, hands finding his hips and pulling him closer in the dim. “Of course you’d find me scrapping hot, you fuckin’ disaster.” Laughs, huffed, soft against him. “Nah man. I love you. Fuck anyone who wants to make me feel ashamed of that.”

Richie smiles at him, then pushes him in the direction of the bedroom, following him down the hall. They leave the hall light on. He’s already shedding his dinner jacket, letting it drop to the floor unceremoniously, and there’s silence for a moment, the soft sound of shedding clothes, his sweater follows, leaving just his t-shirt and pants. “Oh, hey,” he says, as if just remembering something.

Eddie startles, so caught up in watching Richie strip (his hands itch, but he refuses to help, because this is probably the closest to a lapdance he’s going to get) that he forgets to even undo his tie. “Hmm?” He manages, very intelligently, finally shrugging off his cardigan and popping the top button of his shirt. Takes the tie off, making sure Richie is watching him now, threading it around the taller mans neck so he can use it to pull him down, starting to lathe kisses over the places he hasn’t shaved.

And Richie is watching him, watches that silken slide of his tie from around his collar, through his fingers, and suddenly it’s around his neck, cool against his skin. “I love you, too,” he says — because that’s where he was going with it — _‘oh hey, i almost forgot, i’m fucking crazy in love with you,’_ but he’s all wrapped up in Eds now, and it doesn’t come out quite the way he intended. “I don’t say that enough,” he says. “Just— ah…” he moans, and then his fingers are on Eddie’s buttons, undoing them himself.

“No, no, keep going.” Because if Eddie is doing this — is fucking him — he’s doing it right. He guides Richie to sit on the edge of the bed, steps away so that he can’t be touched, the slight whisper that the bedside drawer makes as he opens it filling the room. He knows he’s holding himself differently, that his shoulders are squarer and his back is straighter and—. Yeah. He loves Richie. He loves being fucked by Richie. But up until now there was a little niggling worry in the back of his head.

_He only fucks you like that because he likes women. He likes women so you have to be feminine._

And he doesn’t. It’s like hearing it in his mothers voice and tonight — _come on, Hon_ — is him at thirteen yelling _bullshit_ at her.

“Just…?” As Eddie returns to him, running his hands up his thighs, bending at the waist to look him in the eye.

Richie inhales through his nose, meeting Eddie’s eyes, spreading his legs a little, enough, beneath his palms, which are — fuck, they’re so warm. His cock twitches in his pants and he licks his lips. “Just…” but he’s totally forgotten, maybe he was just babbling. Just— _just need you to know that. Just need you to keep kissing me. Just think you’re the fucking best—_

“Use your words, Richard.” Smirked as Eddie leans over him, forcing him back against the mattress, crawling on top of him and not straddling his hips for once.

“I— I just.” he’s searching his eyes. “Be gentle, I’m a delicate, virginal flower,” he says instead, something wicked in his eyes. 

“If you want me to fuck you nicely, you have to say nice things.” He kisses down the column of his throat and pulls the neckline of his shirt down instead of taking it off, biting his collarbone hard. Eddie never gets the space to be this way. And sure, he likes being Richie’s Yes Man. Fucking _loves_ doing as he’s told. But the fight is still coursing through his veins. The way Richie had looked at him, pinned against the wall. He wants that look again.

“I am using my words,” he says, hands coming up to Eddie’s shoulders, shifting his shoulders against the mattress. He’s softer, somehow, beneath him. Eyes dark, watching him so closely. When Eddie kisses his throat he shuts his eyes and tips his head back like Eddie does for him. “I—” Richie says to the ceiling, voice wavering slightly “— want you to— fuck…” he arches his hips up, but meets only air.

“What do you want, sweetness? Hmm?” Eddie is purring as he teases him, hand drifting feathersoft and possessive over his ribs. “You want me to stop? You want me to do _this_?” He strokes his other hand through the tangle of Richie’s hair, clenches his fist and pulls. It’s gentle, but hinting at more. More strength. More power than he’s allowed Richie to see from him. “ _I_ want you to put your goddamn clothes in the hamper instead of leaving them all over the apartment.” Still teasing, lifting his shirt as his fingers travel back up Richie’s body, suddenly sitting up and reaching for the lube. “Get naked, Trashmouth.”

“My clothes get left all over the apartment because _you_ take them off,” Richie says, as if released from a spell the moment Eddie pulls away. He sits up, watching him, his eyes riveted to his fingers around the lube.

And then he does as he’s told. 

He pulls off his shirt, and undoes his pants, sliding them down along with his underwear and socks, and then he is naked. And Eddie is, decidedly, not and Richie exhales as he sits back on the edge of the bed, careful, fingers closing around the edge of the mattress. He doesn’t take off his glasses — he wants to _see_ him.

“Your clothes get left all over the apartment because you exist solely to annoy me and turn me on.” Eddie counters, eyes never leaving him as he undoes his belt one handed and kicks his shoes under the bed. Where he’ll be able to find them tomorrow. He manages to take off his shirt one handed, too, and his undershirt (he’d gotten quite good at it when he’d broken his arm — at grasping the collar from the back and pulling it off with one fluid movement), and they’re a neat little pile just beyond the end of the bed.

“Are you sure this is okay?” He wants it to be, but it’s Richie, and Eddie needs to at least allow him the option to change his mind. He’s so fucking hard it’s painful, untouched and leaking in his underwear since the fucking alleyway. He slides the belt from his pants and lets them fall to his ankles. Steps out of them and kicks them, also, into the clothes pile.

Richie’s eyes are dark, pupils blown huge, eyes sliding over Eddie’s chest, the line of his hips, the dark hair around his cock as he drops his pants. He loses track, for a moment, there — Eddie’s thighs, stronger than he looks — and then drags his eyes back of to his face. “Yeah,” he says, “Yeah, I’m sure. So, hurry the fuck up, dickwad,” he says, “I’m dying, here.”

“Oh now see, I was going to take my time fingering you open but here you are being horrible to me again.” he laughs, though, and crawls up between his legs. Rests their hips — his twisted to the side so he can get his hands down and beneath him. “Bend your knee for me, Hon.”

Richie’s so hard it almost hurts, moving closer, moving into him, but only a little — not enough to actually touch. Fuck, he wants to, he wants to touch him, but he also wants to be touched, he thinks, so he does as he’s told, bends his knee up, shifting to lean back a little, because that just seems to make sense. “You love it,” he teases, softly, “when I call you names.”

“Shut up.” He draws his hand back and spreads lube over two fingers, leaning his chin into his other hand as he rests his elbow next to Richie’s head, their legs tangled together as his fingers slide between his asscheeks, using his thumb to spread them slightly, the lube cold against his entrance. Eddie has to take a deep, steadying breath, and leans down into him. Meets his lips gently, softly, as loving and distracting as he can be with his mouth and tongue as he slides a finger up to the knuckle inside him. “ _Fuck_.”

Richie doesn’t make a sound, just breathes through it, through his nose, pressing harder into the kiss. It’s okay, so far. He tries to remind himself to relax, and he feels like he’s _trying_. He feels like he’s doing well enough, and his hands are free, so he reaches around and slides his fingers up the back of Eddie’s hair, keeping him close.

“You’re doing so good, Hon. So, so good.” Quiet and husky, pulling his eyes up from where he was watching his finger disappear into Richie’s body to meet his gaze. “I love you so much.” Down again, mouth open against where he’d bruised his neck earlier, kissing at the marked skin gently, pushing with his finger and curling it slightly. Hooking and searching. “Feel okay?”

“Nn, yeah,” he says, and then laughs, because he isn’t quite sure what that sound was, but it wasn’t a ‘no’. “Yes, yeah.” And that feels strange, the crook of his finger, in a way he isn’t sure he likes, but then it switches, just for a moment, jarringly sudden. There’s this sensation that isn’t pain but isn’t pleasure, either, and he’s never touched himself like this before so he doesn’t expect it. His breath hitches sharply. “Oh, fuck,” he says, free hand sliding down to Eddie’s hip, closing around it for purchase, holding tight.

“There?” Eddie double checks, does it again, watches his face for any hint of true discomfort. And then he does it again, and again, and again. Eddie has always been a fast learner, doesn’t see why he should stop now, kisses Richie’s cheek as tenderly as he can with everything in him screaming a thousand different ways to fuck him. 

When Richie feels loose — or as loose as he’s going to be for his first time — he takes the fingers out and lines himself up. One hand on his dick to guide it, the other with a flattened palm rubbing down Richie’s thigh to hook his leg over his hip. And then it’s just blissful, slow, tight heat. And Richie’s heel digs into the small of his back, drives him further, keeps himself upright on one elbow while his other hand wraps around the length of Richie’s cock. The one he’d used to finger him. The one still slick with lube.

“Jesus fuck,” Richie breathes. He feels fucking light-headed, but not in a bad way. The sensation quickly grounds him, and he’s got both hands on Eddie’s back, one leg hooked around his hip, the other raised, heel digging hard into the mattress as he arches into Eddie’s touch. “Eddie,” he says, voice tight. It’s still strange, but it doesn’t _hurt_. Not exactly. Once, twice, he’s made Eddie come just from fucking him like this, cock untouched. Richie has no idea how he will ever accomplish that, wonders if he even can. Still, even thinking about that makes him, somehow harder than he was before. “Fuck, you’re going to kill me,” he breathes, getting one hand down between them to make Eddie hold his cock tighter.

And Eddie makes this weird strangled noise of confirmation, hips moving back, and then forward again, as slow as he can fucking manage when he wants to fuck Richie’s brains out, the elbow supporting him giving out. So instead he wraps his arm around Richie’s head and shifts so his weight is on his knees, gasping wetly against Richie’s ear. “You feel so good, darlin’. So good. You’re gonna kill me first.” Thrusts, properly, just a little. Just to show Richie what it’s like.

He grits his teeth, more startled than anything. It does kind of hurt, now, kind of burns, but not enough to stop. “Please— please touch me, Eds,” he whispers, and scrabbles a little against him, trying to— fuck, he doesn’t know. Get closer, _do_ something with his ache inside him, this fullness, this want. “Fuck, Eddie, f— Eddie, Eddie—”

“I’ve got you, babe, I’ve got you.” Fuck, he’s a terrible boyfriend. How could he have forgotten to move his hand? He strokes Richie’s cock in time with the rolling of his hips, nuzzling his cheek and chin against the flat of his shoulder, lips boiling hot and soft as he kisses over the skin. Gets his hand out from under his head to lay it flat on the mattress, his hair coming loose from the gel and hanging in his eyes as he looks down at him.

“Jesus christ, you’re gorgeous,” Richie says. He’s still wearing his glasses, too, he realizes, how did that happen? He’s fucking glad he is, though. He puts his hand in his hair as if he might kiss him, but doesn’t. Instead he just jerks, arches beneath him, and his eyes flutter closed for a second, brow furrowing. He tilts his hips up, and that feels better, feels fucking filthy, too, and he grits out this moan before he says “You can go harder, just—” eyes opening to Eddie’s again, his hair in his face, his freckles. He’s so goddamn _intense_ , Richie thinks. He’s always thought it, always known it, but this is different. This is a side Eds hasn’t shown him before. And Richie — Richie likes it.

“Fuck.” Eddie breathes, then nods, then leans down to kiss him. _‘You can go harder.’_ He knows what will help. He sits up, hand still around him, dick still inside him, and pulls so that his legs are over his shoulders. So he’s fucking him from his knees. At this angle the slide of his cock against his skin is easier, he can press deeper, he can turn his head to kiss his ankle. His hand - the one not fisted around his cock - is grasping his thigh hard enough to leave a bruise. He’ll watch it blossom in a few hours, in the orange of early morning, but for now he’s content to leave the skin white and aching.

He does what Richie wants, always. He strokes him faster, fucks him harder, the vein in his neck a thick rope of exertion as he throws his head back and moans Richie’s name, garbled encouragement, words of love.

That shift changes something, and Richie fists his fingers hard in the sheets because it’s both good and disorienting. He thinks he knows, on some level, that if he comes first, it will hurt. He knows that the sheer level of desperate desire that he’s hit — this impossible, arcing crest of want he’s riding — is one of the main things standing between pleasure and this ache that’s just on the wrong side of sweet. He also knows that he’s lucky for Eddie’s infinite patience (and, apparently, experience), and liberal amounts of lube. He reaches down and stops Eddie’s fingers on his cock, holds onto his wrist so fucking tight, tight enough to mark his skin red because he is so fucking close. “Come in me, I want to feel you— Eds— Eddie.”

And the combination of the words and the way his fingers feel on his wrist — the way it _hurts_ — works. Eddie gasps, maybe Richie’s name, but he can’t be sure. His thrusts lose rhythm, turn erratic, and then his body trembles and goes completely still and he’s coming. He’s coming _in Richie_ and it feels filthy and disgusting and wonderful. He knows he looks wrecked. Knows his hair is loose and curling with sweat. Knows his face is flushed pink with his chest. He keeps moving, slow, gentle now, until he can’t anymore. He stares down at Richie from where he’s resting his cheek against his foot, pure wonder across his face, as he moves himself out of him. Flexes his hand in his grip.

And Richie’s still clinging to him, didn’t realize he was. He lets go, flexing his fingers in the air, and he lets his legs fall from Eddie’s shoulders and groans at the feeling. Something in his spine pops and he laughs softly, but he’s still desperately, painfully hard, shaky. He opens his eyes, blinking a little against the half-light and says “You look fucked,” and he means it literally. Like he’s been fucking. He reaches out and brushes some of the hair from Eddie’s face. “Hey—” His legs are shaking. “Come here.”

Eddie nods, untangles himself from Richies body and crawls up the bed to collapse next to him. He sighs hard, like he’s breathing for the very first time, wriggles until Richie’s arm is around him and then replaces his hand on his dick.

“Wanna make you come, too.” So quiet it’s barely there, looking at him through teardark eyelashes, eyes an abyss in the lamplight.

“You’re not far off,” Richie says, voice low, and he runs a hand over his jaw and into his hair, and then kisses him, openmouthed, vulnerable, because that’s how he feels — how he _felt_ tonight, and he wants — fucking, he just wants Eds. He has him, and he still wants him and it’s absolutely fucking insane, he knows that. He does. He feels it anyway. “I love you,” he says against his mouth, brow furrowing, and then he pulls back because christ, sometimes — sometimes when he’s caught up in this, in them, in the friction and synergy between them, in the way they _fit_ — he thinks he could come just by looking at him. So he fucking does. He just looks at him, thumb resting just below Eddie’s chin, fingers behind his ear. He holds his eyes and lifts his hips into Eddie’s hand and he comes.

From the expression on Eddies face — open, like Richie’s, eyes wide and cheeks glaring redder and eyebrows knitting in something close to pain — it would be easy to assume he was coming again. Coming dry, because Richie’s had everything he can give, hand stuttering around him as he gasps. It’s because Richie is looking at him. Really looking. The way he does sometimes when Eddie’s gotten up first in the morning and is still rumpled with sleep at the dining table, granola half eaten and a pot of coffee in front of him. 

He cleans his hand with his tongue, just so Richie doesn’t have this over him. Because everything between them is still a competition, one that Eddie is content to play until he dies for real. And he kisses him with his come on his lips, sugar sweet.

“I love you too, Richie. So much.”

~

Winter finds them, even in California. They’ve been holed up in the apartment for maybe a month, maybe two, Eddie’s stopped noticing the passage of time beyond grocery trips and dinners in restaurants he always picks and looking for a wedding present for two of his very best friends in the whole world. Richie, pillar of strength and wit and sanity that he is, is solid under his hands every time Eddie needs to ground himself. They ignore the phone ringing for as long as they can, always the same time every day, always three long tries in succession, Richie glancing at the screen and tossing it down and pressing his face into Eddie’s hair and:

“It’s just Steve.”

“So you should answer it.”

“Not yet.” For a month (or two). 

But they can’t ignore real life forever. They can’t just live wrapped around each other like vines, even though Eddie wants to more desperately than he wants anything else.

~

Richie had had a feeling, when his phone rang and he swiped to answer, that this was really not a good idea. And yeah, he should’ve listened to that gut instinct, because Steve having finally gotten through after _weeks_ is furious — apoplectic, really, and Richie puts on his best I’m An Adult voice, the voice that says I’m Calm and In Control and You Will Not Dick Me Around, but Steve’s too far gone. Steve only gives a shit about Steve, and Richie remembers how it felt to vomit and then be rushed onstage before he even knew what the fuck he was feeling. He remembers all the times he voiced uncertainty, and Steve replied with “We’ll talk about it after,” and then didn’t. 

Eddie’s cooking breakfast when he hears the phone ring. Hears Richie pick up, for once, hears a raised voice on the other end of the line and puts his whisk down. Waffles will wait. He lingers in the doorway of the kitchen, watching the tension mount on Richie's shoulders until they’re trembling. Listens to;

“No, dude, I want to write my own shit from now on—. Because what they’re writing isn’t funny. I have it on pretty good authority that—. But I don’t want to make jokes about that now—. Because shit’s changed, man—.” And it goes on like this for a while before Eddie’s had enough. He remembers what he said at Ben and Bev’s.

_You’re the boss._

Richie’s the goddamn boss and he deserves more respect than this. So he crosses the floor and takes the phone from his fingers, standing in front of him with an arm crossed over his chest, hand tucked into his own armpit. There’s something of their first date night about his body: straight backed and square shoulders, irritation in his eyes.

“This is Edward Kaspbrak, I understand I’m speaking to Steve? Okay, excellent…” he holds a finger up to Richie when he tries to speak. “I was under the impression that you were on contract to Richie, not the other way around.”

And Steve, for his credit, just kind of sputters at him. Eddie glances at Richie, winks.

“If I’m incorrect please feel free to email me copies of your paperwork, I’d be happy to go through them myself, I have a history in insurance. Which means I know you can get your deposits back from the venues you have booked…” cranes his neck to look at the calendar, “after the next two weeks. You can reclaim any loss once Richie is ready to work again, and only then.” 

Because Eddie can get a job. He can talk to the Losers and work something out.

As for Richie, it grounds him just to meet Eddie’s eyes, and that’s why he just lets him take over the call. Why he lets go. Because Eddie’s a pillar, a safe place, and Richie trusts him, even though there’s a part of him that feels like he should be handling this himself.

The thought is fleeting, though. He’s been tired, he thinks, for longer than just returning to Derry. Like maybe it’s been years and years between feeling okay, and now. And it’s this genuine struggle that he feels every time he goes automatically for a glass of bourbon and fucking saltines or something for supper, and then Eddie’s there telling him something about Food Groups… until Richie — who has been just coasting, just passing through life in a series of vacant routines — until he’s suddenly spending evenings in the kitchen making something that actually resembles food with more than two colours and they’re laughing and free and christ, it’s just so goddamn real. It’s so goddamn real. 

So he’s eating. Properly. And his headaches clear up, and so does the fog in his head, and he knows it’s because Eddie’s there, looking out for him, taking care of him — and maybe it’s a little bit because there’s all these memories resurfacing, nothing obscuring them anymore, now that It’s dead — but he half thinks…

_I should have been able to do this myself._

It’s the same with Eddie’s cleaning, his organizing. A thousand and one things Richie’s been planning to Get Around To for… christ, months. Years, some of it.

_I should have been able to do this myself…_

Only this time, sometimes, he doesn’t want to. Sometimes standing shoulder to shoulder washing dishes, with the songs Eds likes playing somewhere in the apartment and, Richie ragging on him about his music choices, sometimes this is, he knows it, all he’s ever needed.

He just isn’t entirely sure how to reconcile that with who he wants to be. Who he’s been trying to be his whole life, because that person was always, at the end of the day, alone.

And Eddie—. Eddie is still talking about contracts, starting to pace, voice rising and falling until he finally just—.

“Look. We’ve made our decision. Richie is going to take another month or so to get some of his own material together. If you disagree I suggest you start looking for other clients. Believe me when I say you’re completely replaceable.” He takes a breath. “We’ll be in touch.” And then he hangs up on him. Because he doesn’t care. Because Richie will be successful with or without Steve. 

Eddie hands Richie his phone back and bends at the middle to kiss his forehead. There’s some distant part of him which knows Richie is struggling with… with how Eddie is. With his need for control in more or less everything about his life. He thinks it probably goes back to Ma, to feeling small and weak and not being that anymore. He sees Richie watching him sometimes when he’s cleaning, or checking fresh produce for soft parts, or insisting that Cookie Crisp is for weekends, with this worried little wrinkle on his forehead. His mouth drawn down and lined. And Eddie thinks not for the first time that maybe—.

Richie deserves someone more fun.

But he can’t just sit by and let him be spoken to like that. Not now. Not when they’re forty fucking years old and answer to no one.

“Fucking Steve.” Is what he says instead of _are you okay?_ because Richie is sick of him checking on that. He just knows he is.

Richie laughs. It’s an exhale that doesn’t touch his mouth let alone his eyes. Because it’s not funny, it’s relief. And something else, something he doesn’t like to touch or examine because he knows — rationalizes — that it’s hard. It’s hard to be forty and only remember one another at twelve, thirteen… it’s hard to grow and change and also be the same in all the right ways. It’s hard to still fit. That’s why he likes the surface stuff, the parts where he makes Eddie laugh until they’re both crying. The parts where he’s just Richie Trashmouth, filled with annoying up to the eyeballs, but at least he’s fucking funny. At least he’s useful then. Because, honestly, apart from fucking him until they’re both actually quivering with exhaustion — he isn’t sure what the fuck it is he actually does for _Eddie_.

So he says “Yeah. Fucking Steve. Now I have to find a new PR,” he says, and suddenly the smile is a little more real because that’s kind of hilarious. Or maybe he’s just giddy because he won’t have to listen to his phone ringing tomorrow.

And Eddie says: “Well, we’ll deal with that when we have to.” He plops down next to him, couch fwumping under his weight. Picks his hand up to play with his fingers. “So. You’ve been acting kinda funny lately.” And he doesn’t mean funny-haha. “Do you want to talk about whatever it is eating at you?”

Because Eddie knows. And in his experience this kind of knowing comes with the termination of a relationship. And maybe he’s just not new and shiny for Richie anymore. Maybe the reality of it is that he’s realised the last twenty seven years were better without Eddie in them.

Eddie tastes something bittersweet and cloying in the back of his throat, and can’t place it. TCP and— summer fruits? “Are we okay?” And that mutes the taste, a little. Kind of.

And, Oh, yeah, Richie doesn’t like _that_. 

_Are we okay?_

_That_ plummets through his chest and his gut like a stone thrown into a river. “What?” he asks, and his voice is wrong, he hears it. It’s not a Voice, though, it’s fear, maybe. He searches Eddie’s eyes and tries to get ahold of whatever else he said, get ahold of what came before _Are we okay?_ “There’s nothing,” he says. “No, it’s just… weird. It’s weird being back. I want to like… read comics in the clubhouse or something,” he jokes, “I don’t know. I don’t want to do this anymore,” he says, eyes on the apartment, the phone screen — dead and black now, without Steve’s persistence, but threatening all the same. The fucking… material he’s been struggling to write that’s waiting for him in his black notebook on the couch. Most of it is scratchings out.

It stings. Eddie drops his hand, remembers I’m not calling you my boyfriend and steadies his resolve. Because he loves Richie. He does. He loves him enough to let him go. There’s silence for a minute while Eddie digests it.

_I don’t want to do this anymore._

Means: this was a mistake. You were a mistake. You don’t fit into my life like you think you do.

And he swallows, spins his useless wedding ring around his finger and thinks _why the fuck am I still wearing this?_ Takes it off and pockets it and rests his hands on his knees. Looks at Richie, really takes him in, that like of jaw and the sleepless night collecting around his eyes and the splotch of shaving cream he forgot to wipe off and thinks.

_No._

Thinks.

_But I love you._

Thinks.

_I’ve always loved you._

And says;

“Okay. If that—. That’s fine, Richie. It’s okay. Everyone—.” Everyone does people that end up being regrets. “I can move my shit out here and get a job—. If you’re okay hosting me until I can save enough for a rental?”

Richie’s whole fucking body goes tight, and then he’s reaching, searching for him, words spilling out “Whoa, whoa, heyheyhey no, no. _No_ ,” he reiterates, in case the first two weren’t clear enough. “No, sorry, no, Eddie. Eddie.” Searching his eyes like he’s trying to get him to look at him, like at Neibolt, and Eddie’s broken arm, and It cornering them, Bev clutching the back of his shirt, screaming screaming. “Jesus, Eddie,” he says and moves, rests his forehead on Eddie’s shoulder. He says “Love, no,” and it comes from nowhere. Or it comes from the heart of him. And it feels like _this is what I’ve always called you_. He thinks the words _milk and honey are under your tongue_ because he read it somewhere, once — maybe in college, and can’t fucking remember where. “This place, I meant this place. And maybe this job. And also like… fucking L.A. That’s what I meant.”

“Oh my god.” And his body goes boneless with relief, and then Eddie smacks him hard around the back of the head. “Use your fucking words.” But there’s no anger to it, no bite, because he’s laughing. And possibly crying. Maybe. “Okay that— that we can absolutely deal with.” Shifts to fit around him, the way he always has and—

_Love._

It fits. He turns his head to kiss the top of Richie’s, eyes squeezing closed.

“Don’t fucking scare me like that I hate you so much right now.” But he doesn’t. He loves him. He loves him now and he loved him at thirteen with skinny limbs and unfocused eyes. He loved him months ago bleeding out in the sewers. He loved him for twenty seven years and is angry all the time that Pennywise took that from him and left him with a desperate yearning for—. He didn’t know what. He huffs a gentle sigh of thank god, and sits up a little. “But we can fix that. We can absolutely fix that. We’ll stay in California because, no, fuck you, it’s not the job it’s the material. You’re funny, Richie. You love being funny. But it needs to be you, that’s all.”

“All of my stories are about you,” Richie says. “You’re a freak of nature, Eds.” It’s probably very hurtful, because he says it with his nose in Eddie’s hair, lips against the bone behind his ear. But he’s thinking now, now that the panic between them is fading, now that, maybe, the worst is out there and over — neither of them want to be out of this — he says, very soft “Sometimes you should just let me eat fucking crackers for supper, though.” What he means — let me figure this out on my own.

“Don’t come crying to me for antacids when you have a stomach ache.” Eddie says, pulling them both so he’s laying on his back and Richie is resting against him. “I forget, sometimes. That you’re an adult now.” Soft, scratching over the back of his head. “That’s my bad.” Then; “You can tell stories about me. I don’t care. It’s not like they have to see my freak of nature face, right?” Shrugs, presses his nose into his hair and inhales deeply. Richie smells like cigarette smoke and the laundry detergent Eddie picked out. “I’ll try and cool it with the—. The fucking dad vibes, okay? I can’t promise I won’t forget but. I’ll try.”

“This is starting to get sexually confusing,” Richie says through a grin. “And, no, it’s not— it’s… not… like, I know I’m kind of a fuckup, okay? I mean as a person, and don’t— I know I am. And I know I haven’t—” it’s easier to speak to the ceiling so he shifts, shoulder to shoulder with Eddie, and speaks to it instead. “It’s weird, all of you are so collected, I mean not— it isn’t perfect, but Bev’s got her business separated from that fucking asshole’s now, and Ben’s like— jesus — you know, successful. And you and Bill and Mike… I’m the only one without a grownup job. I’m the only one that has a fucking stack of mail a foot high — I mean, until you sorted it, thank you — but I should. I should be able to do all that. How’d all of you grow up so good?”

And Eddie's eyebrows furrow. Richie can’t see, he’s looking at the ceiling - they both are now —, but he makes the face anyway. The we’ll be seventy years old asshole face, and searches for his hand between them. “You think you didn’t grow up good? Me and Bev married our parents. Bill has a trauma list a mile long and married a dollar store beverly. Mike spent twenty seven years in a backwater town driving himself insane. Ben was alone.” He swallows. “Stan grew up good. Stan was fine until—” Until Mike. “Don’t you dare shit on yourself like that. Don’t you dare. You know how much I wished I could be more like you, growing up? That I could be fun and make people laugh and make them relax like you? Don’t you fucking dare, Richie. Not ever.” He takes a deep, shuddering breath. “You’re holding yourself against things that the world expects from you. Fuck, man, if you’re happy and you can get by, you’ve fucking won. It doesn’t matter how— how fucking put together you are. I only nag you about shit because I don’t want you to have a heart attack in four years when I only just got you back, asshole.”

“I’m pretty sure I’ve almost had a heart attack the last three times I came because you’re like the goddamn energizer bunny,” Richie says. “Like, seriously, I saw stars and then everything went black,” and suddenly he’s laughing. He feels okay. He twists their hands a little between them, like hey. “Are you okay? Now that we’re playing Therapy?”

“I guess that means I’m cutting you off from sex then.” But Eddie's smiling, thumb rubbing over the bone of his wrist as he bites his bottom lip and finds the light fixture to talk to. “I guess I’m— yeah. I mean, I’m fine. For a dead guy I’m doing pretty okay.” There are nightmares, sometimes, but he copes. Wakes up and finds Richie in the dark and reassures himself that he’s not alone underwater. He sighs, squeezes Richie’s fingers. “I guess I’m still a little hung up on like. I don’t know. I know the boyfriend stuff is because you think it’s— trite and worthless and not what we are because we’re more. But sometimes I remember and I think about Ma and Myra and—. I don’t know. It’s dumb. I kind of think you can do better than me, a little.”

Richie snorts and says “No,” like that’s the stupidest thing he’s ever heard. “I’ve been fucking nuts about you since forever. Since I met you, I think. I don’t remember all of it, but I remember this like— fucking frenetic energy I’d get whenever you’d show up. Before we were even thinking about love and sex or any of that. You’d show up and I’d just be fucking vibrating with all this— feeling, and I didn’t know what to do with it, and I wanted you to pay attention to me _all the time_ , I remember that. And when I saw you again at the Jade, it was the same like—“ he exhales. “Wow, yeah, it was like every moment your eyes were on someone else I felt like a neglected kid, like… I know I can’t prove it. Fuck, I wish I could, but you’re—… other people, the other people…” he’s saying people, but he means _women_ , it just doesn’t feel right anymore, to pretend that he’s always been straight until Eds. Or that he’s straight, and Eds is the exception. He knows it’s not like that. “Always… I was missing something. And they missed something that I couldn’t give, and I never feel like we come up short, me and you. Right? I mean, you feel that, right?” He turns onto his side to look at him. “We’ve got a foundation, or something. The pieces fit. I don’t fucking want or need to do better. I know what it feels like to lose you, and I never—” his voice breaks into a whisper. He can’t finish. _I never want to feel that again._

“I’m no fun.” Eddie says in a small voice, because anything he had lined up to argue with him feel stupid now. Feel wrong in the face of Richie truly opening up. He can feel his cheeks glowing, hot and pink, making his freckles stand out even darker in the mid morning sun. But he thinks about what Richie is saying. Other people came up short. There was always something missing. And he grins. Hides his face in his hands and nods. “I mean, yeah,” it comes out muffled against his palms, “we joke about it but— college was a lot of failed attempts to find you, I think, looking back on it now. And then when I left college I kind of thought it was just me? That I was looking in the wrong places? And then I met Myra at a work thing and—.” 

And it was never like this. They’d stayed together because it was the easiest option, because it was the option that made most sense, because it was the most familiar thing. And everything and nothing is familiar about Richie. “— and I loved her, but it wasn’t— it was the same way I loved Ma, I think. As gross as that is.”

Richie frowns at him. Keeps frowning as he speaks, but he’s listening. Finally, he says: “I don’t think it’s— you were looking for something familiar, I don’t think... okay maybe it’s a little gross.” He smiles. “Also, you are fun, idiot. You’re the only one that ever entertained my crazy.“

  
“Yeah well. I’ve had a crush on you for forever so. Duh, of course I entertained your crazy.” Eddie shifts, drops his hands away from his face and turns over so they’re face to face. Nose to nose. He ignores the heat still coming from his skin. “I— yeah. I was looking for you, numbnuts.” Slots his fingers in, index under Richie's ear and thumb along his jawbone. “And like— yeah, okay, I didn’t laugh at your show when I brought Myra, but I can remember sitting there thinking—. Looking at you and just—. God, he looks so sad, you know? He looks so lonely.” 

“Jesus, thanks a lot,” Richie says. But he was lonely, had been. Sometimes he thinks he’s spent his entire life trying hard not to be.

Eddie shakes his head slightly. “It was like looking at you through a fucking— through foggy glass. Like if I saw you clearly I would have remembered. And then I would have had to pack my life up then.” There’s that taste again, those— summer fruits. “Do you remember when we went swimming in the quarry and I tried to drown you? I think my little prepubescent brain thought oh hey if I drown him I can give him mouth to mouth.”

“I’ll give you mouth to mouth,” Richie says and kisses him, following the movement, flowing through it, until Eddie’s pinned on his back. And for a moment he remembers midnight, rain, and this feeling of... god, what is that? He can almost taste a storm.

And whatever Eddie had to say about it, whatever clever retort, it dies on his tongue at the slide of Richie’s. He moves until he’s holding his face, hands always feeling incredibly small against him — against all of him — mouth opening under his as he sighs.

Eddie loves this. The ease of it. The unquestionable pang of need that never goes unaddressed because it’s not always about sex. Sometimes it’s about contact, free of expectation, kissing for the sake of kissing and—. He thinks about the golden glow of sunset through the leaves, in the Barrens, tweezers in hand and—. And then it’s gone again, and they’re middle aged, and he’s pulling so Richie can lay between his legs. “You know when I say that I love you, I’ve already taken into account that you’re—“ what did he call himself— “you’re a fuckup, right? They’re your words dude don’t get offended.” Kisses him again, teeth closing on his bottom lip. “Sometimes you say shit and you sound like you think I should be ashamed and I’m not. Because we’re here together. It doesn’t fucking matter what the last twenty seven years were because we’re here now. Right?”

“Yeah,” he agrees, softly, and wonders why the fuck he can’t put it all together into words like that. The way Eddie can. He pulls back a little — enough to look at him — fingers in his hair. “Hey. You too, all right? You do it too, like you think _I’m_ going to be ashamed. I’m not... we’re both losers, right? Through and through. But not between us.” He waves a hand between them. “You’re the best. To me you are. Okay? There’s some real shit — literal and figurative shit that we have been through,” he grins, “and there will probably be more, just... less sewery. But we’ve got it. Hm? We’ve _got_ this, Eds.”

“Yeah.” He says back. Eddie blinks rapidly up at him, face still flushed, fingers still holding his jaw. “And I don’t know. I don’t think I’ll ever write the idea of having to be in a sewer off ever again.” It ends on a laugh and he bends a knee to make more room for Richie. “We’ve totally got this. We can move out of this city and— I don’t know. Maybe near the mountains?” The flush deepens because the admission of softness — of forethought — awakens a teenage embarrassment in him. Like he thinks Richie's going to laugh, like he did over cooties and your mom and his fucking red shorts. “You wanted weather, so…”

Richie notices — it’s funny, but — his brow furrows and he touches the edge of Eddie’s nose, just at the corner of his right eye. “You know, look, you still have freckles,” he tells him, and even though it’s raining outside, he feels, for a moment, like the full light of the sun is on him — sunlight has weight and — is that something Bill said? He can’t remember. He almost hears wind blowing gently through trees — proper ones, not just palms — trees somewhere, but no, that’s just the rain falling outside. Just the rain. “Did you know you did?”

Eddie’s makes a kind of face before he can stop himself, but he lets it go, and looks away. Embarrassed. Freckles denote childhood and Eddie's locked part of that away. “Yeah I— I don’t know. I guess i caught the sun, or something.” Looks back at him, the sunlight that does make its way through the clouds and windows lighting his eyes into gold and green and muddy brown. And he thinks trees and beestings and fruit and—

And it’s gone again.

“I’m not sure I can get foundation in my shade, though.” Eddie camps it up, flutters his eyelashes at him and pulls a pouty face. Because it’s—. He never knows what to do when Richie looks at him like that.

Richie’s laughing, even as he gives Eddie’s cheek a little slap — more of a pat, really. An Old Boys Pat On The Cheek. The one he did down in the tunnels under Derry, only this time he’s not injured. It’s weird, though, for a moment. For a moment he sees Eddie down there at twelve, cheek all bandaged up, but he’s sure — no he _knows_ that Bowers had stabbed him this time around, not when they were kids. He knows that. It’s troubling though, sort of makes him feel shaky inside, so he shakes it off. 

Instead there’s this other thing he avoided — the one that had sent butterflies through him that he associates with stage fright, but more pleasant. It’s Eddie clambering into the hammock with him in the clubhouse. It’s Eddie’s legs tangled with his, still smooth in childhood. It’s that kind of feeling. It’s not really that he wants to avoid those feelings, it’s just — he’s trained himself to shake them off. Because it’s also his fingers sliding against Bowers’ cousin’s fingers in the arcade, and it’s Eddie saying ‘I love you,’ that first time in the Town House, and it’s the young dark-haired couple — clearly gay — he’d signed a program for, once, and he’d felt all this shame because they were so beautiful, and so loud, and so free in their flamboyance — in ways Eddie reaches but Richie never could, doesn’t want to — and at the same time, watching them walk away hand in hand — not even hearing what the next person said to him — this longing, right in his fucking chest. Their radiant smiles, directed only to one another.

He doesn’t want to do that, every time. He wants to untrain, unlearn this instinct, and christ, he’s trying. So he takes a breath and tucks his face into Eddie’s neck and says “Tell me more about these mountains.”

So Eddie does, because of course. Of course he does. Eddie turns his face against Richie's and presses his mouth to Richie's forehead and closes his eyes and tells him everything he can remember about the little cabins he’s been looking at. He’s aware that he mostly remembers boring things - miles above sea level, how close the nearest town is, the logistics of ordering groceries, how quickly they can sign on at the doctors, how much it would cost to rent versus buying (especially if they sell the apartment and truly fall in love with a property up there), so after a few minutes he worms his phone out of his back pocket. Kisses Richie's forehead because without the man he wouldn’t have a phone. And pulls up the website to scroll through photos. Pointedly ignores the little marks held against the ones he’s already emailed about. Just to ask. Just to see.

And for Richie. it feels real. Suddenly, overwhelmingly it feels very real, very possible. And he’s listening to Eds talk, watching him scroll, and suddenly the pictures — all the different ones — start to take shape in his mind. A lot of these properties are in Idyllwild, which is California, still, but it’s not Hollywood. It’s not LA. He thinks there’s weather there. He thinks _we can do this_ , thinks _we’re allowed to do this_ , and suddenly it’s coursing through him like electricity. He reaches out to take the phone — really, he takes Eddie’s hand, holding the phone together, and he pulls it down between their chests. He looks over at him. “Let’s do this,” he says. “No, let’s actually fucking do this. We can go tomorrow. We can just— we’ll make some appointments, drive up.”

“I’ll call if you drive?” It’s infectious. The best kind of infection, flaring in Eddie’s chest like the Fourth of July, and he knocks their noses together almost painfully as he leans into him for a kiss. And then another, and another, because he’s been so worried about keeping this a secret, like Richie would shout at him for wanting to go anywhere but here. “These,” he lifts the phone again and points, “are the ones who’ve already emailed me back, so they might be a good starting point? I looked for ones with three bedrooms so—.” So everyone can stay.

_'It would be cool to live with all my friends.'_

“— so everyone more or less has their own space, you know? If Ben and Bev want to stay? What do you think?”

“I think,” Richie says, “I’d better start writing,” he says, eyes flickering to the living room, because they’ll need money. More than he has. But yeah, he thinks it’s brilliant. He does. They just have to make it work.

“After tomorrow.” Eddie takes his face in one hand, thumbprint against his chin so he’ll look him in the eyes. “And I’ll get a job, anyway. I know I said it earlier, but—. I miss working. I do. I don’t know what I’ll— be able to do, up there, but you’ll only have to deal with this financially for like six months at most. And we can sell this place, and—.” He furrows his eyebrows, bites his bottom lip.

“I don’t know. I can definitely work this out. Just give me, like, a week and I’ll have a full fucking excel spreadsheet.”

And Richie laughs out loud.

**Author's Note:**

> more to come. stay tuned! and thanks for reading <3
> 
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